enter and exit. If a character sleeps in a room without windows, don't allow in a sudden, unexpected beam of sunlight.
For anyone who has a complicated setting, I often recommend keeping a notebook with all the small details in it as a kind of reference guide in case you get lost. I recommend this for any amount of significant research. If you have trouble organizing, try to keep your notes ordered into chapters and scenes in a linear fashion.
Before language, humans were like other animals; we came to know our world through our most primary set of tools for understanding and learn-ing—our senses. The senses are as core a scene element as you can get, and are very important in writing fiction because they transform flat words on a page into three-dimensional, realistic scenes. However, many writers overlook senses other than sight and sound. In a scene that takes place in a garden, for instance, you might forget to allow readers the opportunity to smell the jasmine and lilacs that drew your character out to the garden in the first place. Or you might show a character eating an entire tin of cookies without telling the reader what flavor they are. No matter when you add in sensual details—upon revision or at the start—remember that they are key tools for bringing your written world alive for readers.
AUTHENTICITY OF DETAIL
The sensual experiences that you describe should be realistic and believable. If a character is cooking blackberry pie, but the scent emanating from the oven smells "savory and meaty," you're off base; obviously a blackberry pie would smell sweet.
Also, the senses are a part of everyday life, so they should, in fact, be blended into your scenes as an integral part of the stage you set. If your scene's stage is a meadow in County Cork, Ireland, then there ought to be the nutty smell of grass and the sweet perfume of wildflowers, and possibly the musky scent of animals and mud. There might be birds trilling or sheep baaing or the gentle slicing sound of a scythe cutting hay. Characters will feel the wind on their face and the ropy knots of lavender stems between their fingers. The more seamlessly all these sensual details emerge, so that they are the backdrop to the scene in which a young boy confesses to his angry father that he is leaving Ireland, the more the reader will feel transported to that very spot and time, her own senses activated.
SIGHT
Sight is perhaps the most important, and most ironic, element of scene writing. At no time do you actually draw images or pictures while writing, yet the reader must come away from your wall of text with an experience of seeing. He must be able to draw in his mind images of what your characters look like, what the world in which your characters interact looks like, and all the minutiae in between. This means that you must have a pretty good visual idea of the world you're writing about so that you can help provide the appropriate cues that will turn words into pictures in the reader's mind.
All that can be seen in your scenes is the fictional equivalent of evidence provided in a court case. In court, you can't get away with saying, "The bloody knife was about yea long, and imagine a carved wooden handle here, and some speckles of blood here. Trust me, it was a big, nasty-looking knife, and definitely the murder weapon!" The lawyer must provide an actual knife that meets those specifications for the jury members to set their eyes upon. So must you provide evidence in your scenes. No matter if the piece of evidence proves that someone's lover was just at the house—a cigarette butt covered in suspicious lipstick still smoldering in the ashtray—or if it's graffiti on the side of a house that gives away a vandal; until the reader can see proof, it simply does not exist.
When including details of sight in your story, remember that point of view is not only a vehicle for understanding character, it is also the camera through which the reader sees
For anyone who has a complicated setting, I often recommend keeping a notebook with all the small details in it as a kind of reference guide in case you get lost. I recommend this for any amount of significant research. If you have trouble organizing, try to keep your notes ordered into chapters and scenes in a linear fashion.
Before language, humans were like other animals; we came to know our world through our most primary set of tools for understanding and learn-ing—our senses. The senses are as core a scene element as you can get, and are very important in writing fiction because they transform flat words on a page into three-dimensional, realistic scenes. However, many writers overlook senses other than sight and sound. In a scene that takes place in a garden, for instance, you might forget to allow readers the opportunity to smell the jasmine and lilacs that drew your character out to the garden in the first place. Or you might show a character eating an entire tin of cookies without telling the reader what flavor they are. No matter when you add in sensual details—upon revision or at the start—remember that they are key tools for bringing your written world alive for readers.
AUTHENTICITY OF DETAIL
The sensual experiences that you describe should be realistic and believable. If a character is cooking blackberry pie, but the scent emanating from the oven smells "savory and meaty," you're off base; obviously a blackberry pie would smell sweet.
Also, the senses are a part of everyday life, so they should, in fact, be blended into your scenes as an integral part of the stage you set. If your scene's stage is a meadow in County Cork, Ireland, then there ought to be the nutty smell of grass and the sweet perfume of wildflowers, and possibly the musky scent of animals and mud. There might be birds trilling or sheep baaing or the gentle slicing sound of a scythe cutting hay. Characters will feel the wind on their face and the ropy knots of lavender stems between their fingers. The more seamlessly all these sensual details emerge, so that they are the backdrop to the scene in which a young boy confesses to his angry father that he is leaving Ireland, the more the reader will feel transported to that very spot and time, her own senses activated.
SIGHT
Sight is perhaps the most important, and most ironic, element of scene writing. At no time do you actually draw images or pictures while writing, yet the reader must come away from your wall of text with an experience of seeing. He must be able to draw in his mind images of what your characters look like, what the world in which your characters interact looks like, and all the minutiae in between. This means that you must have a pretty good visual idea of the world you're writing about so that you can help provide the appropriate cues that will turn words into pictures in the reader's mind.
All that can be seen in your scenes is the fictional equivalent of evidence provided in a court case. In court, you can't get away with saying, "The bloody knife was about yea long, and imagine a carved wooden handle here, and some speckles of blood here. Trust me, it was a big, nasty-looking knife, and definitely the murder weapon!" The lawyer must provide an actual knife that meets those specifications for the jury members to set their eyes upon. So must you provide evidence in your scenes. No matter if the piece of evidence proves that someone's lover was just at the house—a cigarette butt covered in suspicious lipstick still smoldering in the ashtray—or if it's graffiti on the side of a house that gives away a vandal; until the reader can see proof, it simply does not exist.
When including details of sight in your story, remember that point of view is not only a vehicle for understanding character, it is also the camera through which the reader sees
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